Category Archives: Sudden Insight

Today’s post features a video entitled “Haiku In Four Seasons” by James Wilson.

A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression. Although not all original haiku poets were Zen adherents, some of those considered to be the best were.

Zen is a school of Buddhism concerned with the cultivation of a profound down-to-earth awareness of this ‘suchness’, unmediated by doctrine or other concepts. Haiku are the most thoroughgoing expression of literary Zen. They are also one of the several meditative ‘Ways’ (like calligraphy and the minimal ink paintings, zenga and haiga) whose form both gives expression to insight and helps to deepen it.

The ‘haiku moment’ is thus no less than a tiny flash of an ultimate reality which in fact is just what is under our noses. These brief poems also distill what is the essential “truth” of Zen; namely that all is impermanent.

This theme is clear in the video below, which adds music and visuals to spoken words. Enjoy!

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Reading this post might make you more mindful. Here is how. The term “mindfulness” is used differently by Langer and by those in the Buddhist tradition. Langer says one way to become more mindful is to see “similarities in things thought different and the differences in things taken to be similar” (pg. 16, On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity). Here is an opportunity for you to play with that notion and hopefully become more mindful. Or, you could choose, mindfully of course, to check out what has gone viral on YouTube today.

In my last blog post I described the Genjo Practice at the Vista Zen Center as having certain parallels to Ellen Langer’s “program” for “personal reinvention”.The arts have long been associated with Zen practice and, although I don’t have any hard evidence to support this, I suspect that these art practices have been used as sort of a practicum where Zen Monks could apply what they learn sitting on a cushion to everyday life.As Langer points out, learning to make mindful choices is easier when these choices are regarding activities that are seen as not having “serious” consequences. (See last blog).I also asserted my belief that engagement in so called non-serious activities as a way of developing creative mindfulness is likely to be more effective (at least for most people) if carried out as a complement to more formal meditation practice.

Is the glass half mindful or half mindless?

Here, I want to lay out why I think this may be the case, but to do so I need to deal with the fact that not everyone agrees on what the term “mindfulness” means.Almost every contemporary review of the mindfulness literature suggests that Langer’s concept and that developed within the context of Buddhism are not the same.

For Langer, creative mindfulness is a way of making choices that are not determined by from old established “rules, routines and mind-sets” (pg.16) , to use her words.She recognizes that her understanding of the concept has some relationship to the term “mindfulness” as it has developed in the Buddhist tradition but does not feel that two are the same.According to Langer:

“For me the two way ofbecoming mindful are not at odds with each other.Becoming more mindful does not involve achieving some altered stat of consciousness through year of meditation.It requires, rather, learning to switch modes of thinking about ourselves and the world.It is very easy to learn to be mindful, which makes doing so appealing to those unwilling to sit for twenty minutes twice a day.Mindfulness is simply the process of noticing new things.” (pg. 16)

I am not certain why Langer associates Buddhist mindfulness practice with “altered states of consciousness, unless she sees what I have been referring to in this blog as being “alive/awake/present” as an altered stated.In some way it is an altered state in the sense that most of us, most of the time are not fully alive/awake/present.Yet as I look throughout Langer’s book, it seems to me that when she describes people acting mindfully, she is describing precisely someone who is alive/awake/present and so is talking about the same thing that I see as the ideal of most spiritual disciplines.

When Langer writes about her (and others’) experiences when she started creating art, she uses terms like “enlivening”, “engaging” “being there” and “being fully present” as she describes mindfully making choices required in such projects.She presents evidence from experiments that suggest that engaging in mindful creativity leads to the creators to feel more “authentic, and prompts others to perceive the mindful creators as more “charismatic” and their creations as “more interesting”.All of this suggests that Langer’s concept of mindfulness is closely related, if not the same as what I have been referring to as being alive/awake/present. Since I see becoming more alive/awake/present as being the ideal of the kinds meditation practices that have been associated with Buddhism, including Zen, I would suggest that the process Langer calls “Reinventing Yourself through Mindful Creativity” is in accord with this ideal.

Langer argues that immersing oneself in a creative practice , like painting, can lead to a gradual development (“Reinventing Yourself”) of mindfulness in all areas of one’s life.I do not dispute this possibility but would suggest that for many people, the generalization of mindfulness into other aspects of life will be limited.One need only point to the biographies of numerous creative people who also lead miserable self-destructive lives as evidence to support my contention. I also know from my own experience that simply doing art does not generally make one consistently mindful in either art or other areas of life. I am also aware of many people who have taken up an artistic practice and are satisfied to produce pieces over and over again, that may display their new-found skills, but not much in the way of “mindful creativity”. This is why I suggested in my last post that for most people a creative practice, as prescribed by Langer, plus mindfulness meditation/training would be more effective in leading to the development of more widespread and consistent mindfulness.

Mindfulness meditation is the central practice in the Hinayana branch of Buddhism and these techniques have recently found their way into Western psychotherapy.Kabat-Zinn, who has been a leader in this development defines “mindfulness as :”the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment — non-judgmentally.”There are various techniques for doing this but they all require setting aside a time for a meditative practice in order to foster and learn to consistently apply this purpose.The Zen literature does not often use the term “mindfulness” but it seems to me that the practice of Zazen, often referred to as “just sitting” also fosters this non-evaluative attention that Kabut-Zinn describes above.

Kabut-Zinn goes on to say:

Mindfulness isn’t about getting your way or meditating so that you can be better at something. My definition of healing is coming to terms with things as they are, so that you can do whatever you can to optimize your potential, whether you are living with chronic pain or having a baby. You can’t control the universe, so mindfulness involves learning to cultivate wisdom and equanimity— not passive resignation—in the face of what Zorba the Greek called the full catastrophe of the human condition.

This sounds very much as a way of describing the ideals of Zen as well as those put forth by Langer.Langer’s work seems to focus on making decisions that are based on being awake/alive/present, while the meditation routines described as mindfulness training and Zazen, may be seen as a practice for acquiring the micro-skills necessary to learn to become awake/alive/present moment by moment.One way of thinking about what happens in mindfulness training is that one acquires the skills to awaken or enliven themselves over and over again in meditation, when demands are few, with the idea that eventually these skills will “spill over” into more active situations.

In Zazen and other mindfulness meditation practices, the practioner learns to “catch” themselves as they drift off into protracted thought-trains and learn to refocus their attention on bodily sensations that are happening in the moment.In earlier articles I referred to this as “remembering to remember”. Having such skill would help immensely in making the kind of mindful decisions that Langer calls for in her book.

In comparing Langer’s notion of “mindfulness” with how that term is used in Buddhist meditation and the subsequent uses in Western therapy, Scott Bishop says the following”

Langer’s mindfulness involves the active construction of new categories and meaning when one pays attention to the stimulus properties of primarily external situations.While our own definition emphasizes the inhibition of such elaborate processes as one pays attention to primarily internal stimuli (thoughts , feeling and sensations).Bishop et. al. pg. 6 (.http://www.prevention.psu.edu/projects/documents/Bishopetal.article.pdf)

I think it is possible to see the interconnection between these two facets of mindfulness if we remember that creativity involves dropping old ideas or approaches as well as developing new ones.The literature on creativity shows again and again that new ideas and solutions are most likely to develop when we stop engaging in rational thought processes See( Sudden Insight)

What is learned in mindfulness training is how to let go of old persisting thoughts, ideas, rules, mind-sets etc. by expanding one’s awareness into the somatic realm, as described by in To Know Flow or No Flow. This form of meditation is sometimes referred to as “insight meditation.”The idea here is that new ways of seeing things can result from letting go of thoughts, mirroring the results of studies in the creativity literature.(Sudden Insight and Creativity)

In previous posts onrefocusing and reframing, I argued that this skill makes in easier for people to make creative choices in everday situations.So someone who has consistently honed the ability to “drop” out of the “thought realm” and into the “realm of bodily sensations” by practicing meditation, should have an advantage of making mindful decisions in the heat of everyday life, whether making art or making a living.

Langer’s focus seems to be on what happens when people are actively engaged in daily activities and does not really write about the mechanism of “letting go” that is the essence ofmindfulness training.Yet, if you look closely at what she says, there is nothing to contradict or dispute the importance of this “letting go”.In fact she speaks directly about the importance of dropping social comparisons and subsequent self evaluations, – a process she describes as replacing our “evaluating self” with our “experiencing self”. This latter term seems to refer to our innate capabilities to pay attention to the kind somatic awareness that is emphasized in mindfulness training/meditation.What she is writing about here is the importance of becoming “non-judgmental” in the same sense as practiced in the dailypractice of mindfulness meditation/training (see Kabat-Zinn’s quote earlier).

In her experiments Langer prompts some subjects into becoming more mindful by asking them to look for things that they would not otherwise look for before making decisions.Langer’s assumption is that by engaging in artistic pursuits, people can learn to do this on their own.I believe that this can happen but have doubts about often and how consistently the general population will be able to learn to “awaken” themselves from being caught up in old habitual thought forms so they can discover mindfully creative solutions to everyday problems.

I believe that some people may naturally have developed these self-awakening skills naturally. and find it easy to move mindfully into new activities with no need for mindfulness training.However, most of us have not I suspect that Langer is one of those who may not feel the need from a daily regime of mindfulness training based on what she says in the quote below (and others in the book)–which would help explain why she has little interest in meditation practice:

To my good fortune, I’ve never thought to ask myself whether I have the talent to do something. If the activity- academic, artistic , or physical- seemed interesting, I tried it. If I didn’t quite get it, I tried it differently. Why should I know how to do something I’ve never done before?”

Langer says that it is easy to learn to be mindful because it is simply the process of noticing new things, and it is easier than meditating twice a day.However,I would argue that most of the population will not find themselves becoming significantly more mindful in all areas of their lives simply by taking up painting or gardening.On the other hand I feel that such “creative pursuits can be excellent ways of allowing one’s growing mindfulness as developed in meditation to “spill over” into daily life activities.By engaging in activities that are generally perceived as “less serious”, there is the opportunity to face challenges that will help reveal one’s degree of mindfulness or mindlessness moment by moment without worrying as much about whether one is making right or wrong decisions.

I agree with Langer’s general idea that engaging in various forms of creative endeavors can help propel one on a path of self-regeneration. Langer seems to say that we can become more mindful simply by “learning to switch modes of thinking about ourselves and the world.” This “switching” for Langer can occur simply by remembering : 1) that any rules were made by a person at some point and that those rules may not apply in the present situation and 2) to look for differences in similarities and similarities in differences.But this is not always easy when we are in the midst of everyday interactions and activities. Most of us, most of the time do not “remember to remember”, which I see as key to this “switching” process that Langer refers to.

This is why the techniques learned in meditation practices like Zazen can help in this process of “Remembering to Remember”. One who has spent the necessary time in meditation practice, watching how his or her thoughts form and disappear and learning techniques that allow “refocusing/reframing” when they catch themselves can help them to “remember to remember” in a wide range of situations.This ability to “awaken” oneself before getting caught up in the thought- streams that reinforce the perceptual and thinking habits that foster mindless reactions is not really the focus of Langer’s work, although nothing she writes contracticts it’s importance. However, this skill is exactly what Zazen and other mindfulness training practices could provide to add depth to the kind of self-reinvention that Langer purposes.

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In my last post titled “ZEN AND THE ART OF MINDFULNESS/CREATIVENESS/BEINGNESS“, I drew upon the personal experiences of composer/artist John Cage, LA Times music critic Adam Baer and myself to argue that actively exposing ourselves to new musical experiences can broaden our listening experiences. I used some of the ideas from Ellen Langer’s book “On Becoming an Artist” to argue that by allowing ourselves to have new listening experiences we are becoming more “mindful”. Personal testimonies such as those used in that post are great, but as a retired experimental social psychologist (like Langer), I appreciate it when I find more rigorous evidence to support my assertions. When I wrote that post I had not read all of Langer’s book and so was later delighted to find that she has conducted some experiments that provide support for the ideas developed there.

Let me first provide a brief overview of “On Becoming an Artist” and then provide a summary of some of Langer’s reseach findings. For Langer, creativity and mindfulness go hand in hand. As I wrote in my previous post: According to Langer: Mindfulness is simply the process of noticing new things. It is seeing the similarities in things thought different and the differences in things taken to be similar” (p. 16). She goes on to say: “the more mindful we are, the more choices we have and the less reactive we become. We don’t realize when we are mindless. We’re not there to notice. If, however we allowed ourselves to become fully engaged in some new activity, over time, we could more easily compare how we feel when we are mindfully engaged with how we feel at other times. The more experience we have with being mindfully creative, the sooner we will recognize when we are simply acting out a script and the sooner we can return to being centered. When we are mindfully engaged, we essentially are writing our own script and are free to choose to make changes at any point. When we are mindfully creative, we are being authentic.” (p. 10-20)

Based on her research, Langer has concluded that there are two main ways that we “teach ourselves to become mindless”. (pg 10) The first is by learning a skill until it becomes “second nature” such as when we go on “autopilot while driving. The problem with this, says Langer, is that it might not occur to us to question the way we are doing things when in fact it may be to our advantage to do so. The second way of learning mindlessness is to accept something we read or hear without question. This is the way we learn many of our cultural norms and values. The problem with this, says Langer is that “we unwittingly lock ourselves into a single understanding of that information”. ( pg 11) In other words we become “set in our way” and this prevents us from engaging each new situation mindfully or creatively. Langer provides evidence that this results in general failure to appreciate life and I will provide some of this in later posts,

What I especially like about Langer’s book is that what she has to say about mindfulness applies to all aspects of life, not just painting or other so called “artistic practices”. But, let’s go back to my previous post, where I wrote about how most of us, most of the time, limit our appreciation of music through mindless listening (e.g. Tom likes Punk Rock and listens to nothing else). As I said above, although I used Langer’s ideas to discuss this topic, I had not yet read the chapter of her book that most directly relates to the topic. The remainder of this post will do so. For Langer, mindfulness primarily entails taking notice of things and this, she suggests “expands our appreciation of them”. (p. 197) This view is based on a series of social psychological experiments conducted by Langer and her students at Harvard. For instance, in one study that directly connects to my last post on John Cage, experimental subjects were convinced to listen to music they said they did not like (either rap or classical). Some of the students were asked to note a number of new things about the music as they listened and others were not asked to make any new distinctions. The experimenters found that the more new things the participants found, the more they said they liked the previously disliked music. In a related experiment, women who thought watching football was boring came to like football more if they were instructed to notice new things about a football game they watched in the experimental laboratories. Similar results were found among students exposed to a painting they were unfamiliar with and with chocolates, regardless of whether they were given samples of inexpensive chocolate or Godiva. When prompted to make distinctions or to find something new about whatever they were doing, students showed greater appreciation for the activity.

Going further, Langer conducted similar kinds of experiments to see whether mindfulness could affect her subjects’ perceptions of other people. According to Langer: “Asking subjects to make mindful distinctions about people tended to mitigate their negative assessments of them…Mindfully drawing new distinctions, thus, helps us to come to know and like others.” ( p200)

Although Langer is not a Buddhist and declares that she is not using the term “mindfulness” in exactly the same way as it is in Buddhism, these results suggest and interesting line of thought. One of the values in all strains of Buddhism (probably in all spiritual/religious perspectives) is the importance of developing Compassion and I know plenty of Zen students, including myself, who feel overwhelmed by idea of having to live up to the Buddhist vow to be compassionate towards all people. Langer’s book led me to a thought train that makes this vow somewhat less daunting. There are studies that show that people are more likely to experience compassion towards another person to the extent that they see this other as similar to them.( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-compassion.html?_r=0)

Extrapolating from Langer’s experiments, it seems reasonable to say that being present with another person and fully “listening” to (i.e. being “Present” with) that person would allow us to become aware of ways in which they are not different from us and make it more likely that we experience compassion for them. (See “The Artist is Present”) By allowing ourselves to perceive the other in depth, we can come to see the arbitrary nature of any single criterion we may have been using to judge and separate ourselves from that person. We come to see that there is no single viewpoint that can capture the other, allowing us to acknowledge that they are not, then, so different from ourselves. If so, compassion is not so much an isolated trait to be somehow “worked on” or “acquired” but rather a natural consequence of becoming more mindful. Just as mindful listening to music or mindful viewing of art allows us to break out of restricting perspectives, we can also learn to mindfully include and thus accept a wider range of humanity.

I think Langer is correct that engaging oneself in a creative practice is a safe way to begin practicing mindfulness and that this mindfulness will expand to other areas of life. But, I also see the practice of Zazen (zen meditation) as providing a similar, perhaps complementary experience. In a later post, I will explore some of the differences between the path that Langer suggests and Zen; for now I will emphasize the similarities.

Langer says that mindfulness is “simply the process of noticing new things” In Zazen, the student practices noticing whatever is happening internally or externally moment by moment which seems to be the essence of mindfulness. According to Langer, when we are mindful we are not “self-conscious. By learning to “let go” of the thoughts that reinforce self-consciousness the Zen meditator is learning the basics of mindfulness. Most of the thoughts we experience during Zazen entail the kinds of comparisons with others and the self-evaluations that Langer says block us from Mindfulness and true creativity (to be looked at further in later posts). To the extent that we can learn to “be still” and fully experience a wider range of situations, activities and people, we chip away at the narrow egocentric viewpoints that keep us feeling separated and unengaged from life.

This summer, while wandering about WaikikI Beach, I happened into a gallery featuring large photographs of landscapes and was struck by their “presence”. To begin with they were nicely framed (see last weeks post) but there was something else about them that I couldn’t put my finger on. In talking to one of the salespersons I learned that the photographer had figured out a way to solve the “depth of field problem” facing photographers, so that everything in the pictures, from foreground to background was “in focus”, that is they were equally clear or sharp (like the photo on the right,above).Typically, because of the mechanics of cameras, photographers are confronted with a choice of whether to focus on subjects in the foreground (leaving the background looking blurry or unfocused) or focusing on the background, which necessarily means that objects up front will appear fuzzy. The photo on the left above and the one in the middle reflect these two extremes. Generally when we view photos we are used to seeing images that approximate one or the other of these two. However there are techniques (see “hyperfocusing” and “photo stacking” ) that can be used to try to produce photos where both the foreground and background objects are equally in focus and clear. In the world of photography, this outcome in rare.

I started thinking about all of this while writing my last post (Creative Reframing in Art and Life ) since much of what I said was derived from Eugene Gendlin’s book called “Focusing” (1978). The essence of his therapeutic technique is helping patients focus on, (pay attention to) a “felt sense” of whatever issues or problems they are dealing with. I argued that “creative reframing” entails learning to shift attention to somatic processes that are not in our awareness and that this can lead to new ways of seeing ( more accurately “creating” ) our reality. This time I want to play with a “sister metaphor” which I call “creative refocusing”. It is basically looking at the same process as reframing but I find that using more than one metaphor to describe the same thing or process can be useful. “Listening” to our “felt sense” of a problem entails a refocusing of attention.

Years ago I took a biofeedback seminar from Dr. Lester Fehmi and have found his theoretical ideas on attentional focus to be helpful in thinking about personal transformation. According to an article by Fehmi and Fritz, most of us, most of the time, are operating in what he calls “Left Hemisphere Narrow Focus” modes of attention, which he describes as the “most habitual and most generally reinforced attentional mode in our society” (24) . In other words, we focus narrowly on our internal thoughts and in extreme cases this can manifests as obsessive worry and preoccupation with recurrent throughts. They go on to say “This refers to the wakeful state in which mental effort is expended to exclude certain aspects of experience through a narrowing or constriction in the some of attention”(p. 24). As in photography, when our reoccurring thoughts are the focus of attention, background objects (somatic signals, including our “felt sense”), although present, are “out of focus”.

Much of his research involves trying to train subjects and patients to shift to what he calls “Right Hemisphere Open Focus” modes and this is what I refer to as “refocusing”. Using biofeedback equipment, subjects learn to attend to what I have referred to earlier as internal somatic signals that are not in our awareness while in a narrow focus mode. The biofeedback machine is programmed to emit a particular sound whenever subjects shift from narrow focus to open focus so they can learn to include these somatic signals into their awareness. Here is what I find to be most fascinating about this research : Fehmi and Fritz state that “….after succeeding in the biofeedback training many trainees report that they had proceeded to the point in training at which they had given up on the task altogether, only to discover that the feedback tone would occur even more frequently after they had stopped actively trying”. This seems to parallel what Lehrer (see the first three blog posts) reports happening in folks that have had creative insights as well as my own experiences in practicing Zen meditation.

It is this fundamental shift in attention that I see as being the basis of what I called “creative reframing”. Being able to get out from under the view of reality that is perpetuated by our internal dialogue, allows for the emergence of new perspectives or insights. This “refocusing” of attention, then is what allows truely “creative reframing” and it seems that this skill is learnable with biofeedback training. I would suggest that this is a key skill that can be learned by practicing Zen as well.

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“Focusing is not Zen, nor is it the only mind-body practice that can assist our explorations of Zen. But because it is so close to the process we follow in zazen, it is exceptionally helpful as a tool to assist us in the ultimate work of Zen, which is the surrender of self”. See “Zen and Focusing” by Janet’s Jiryu Abels Sensei

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Another important idea that comes our of Fehmi’s writings is that the attentional shifts he talks about are not what we typically hear about as in the literature regarding left brain functioning versus right brain functioning. Moving into the Open Focus mode does not necessarily involve shutting out our thoughts and cogitive processes associated with Left Brain functioning. Rather, it is different from the narrow focus mode in that it does not exclude the internal bodily signals that are ignored when narrowly focused on our own thoughts. This observation runs contrary to statements I have heard by both artists and Zen practioners suggesting that their goals is to function exclusively in their right brains. As I showed earlier,(the first 3 posts on this blog) the research in creativity suggests that this probably not useful or even possible for those interested in becoming more creative. As for Zen; James Austin, who has exhaustively studied the psychophysiology of Zen, states…”the proposals that a meditator becomes wholly “right-brained” can not be supported” ( Zen and the Brain, pg. 365).

To return to the photographic metaphor, creative “refocusing” is not moving from extreme foreground focus (with background ignored) to one where the background information is the focus of attention while ignoring the foreground. Rather it is more like the third picture above where foreground (our internal dialogue) and background (internal sensations) are equally clear and salient. In this open mode we are able to appreciate all aspects of our lives and are better able to respond to each new situation as it arises, because we have more information to work with. This seems to be essential to creativity in both life and art.

Most visual artists would agree that how a picture is framed can alter its effect on viewers. Likewise, performing artists have learned to take into consideration the larger context or setting on their performances. Here I want to explore the concept of creative reframing as an essential element of “creativity”, both in the arts and everyday life.

The process of painting “Unresolved” (see photo above), was long and tortuous. When creating abstract expressionist paintings, the artist must apply paint, look at the result and then, based on what is present on the canvas, add more paint or do whatever he or she feels necessary to move towards something they are pleased with. A common issue for such painters is that they find different aspects or sections of the canvas to be pleasing but feel that these elements do not work together to provide a finished piece. My favorite painting teacher, Sally Pearce, used to say that paintings at this stage are “unresolved”; a diplomatic way of saying “get back to work”.

As I recall, the painting that I subsequently titled “Unresolved” was stuck at this stage for what seemed like a long time. I liked it, but it just didn’t seem to be finished. After many weeks of being unresolved (staring at it and thinking about it), I got the idea of putting the canvas on a large frame; once I had done that it occured to me to paint the word “Unresolved” on the frame. That seemed to do the trick; I felt “resolved” and others, including Sally, liked the results.

I don’t recall this resolution coming in the form of an “eureka”-“sudden insight” moment of the type discussed by Joshua Lehrer (see “Sudden Insight and Creativity“). What I do recall is that eventually I put the painting aside for a while, and started working on others. In other words, I “forgot about it”. I stopped thinking about it and, according to Lehrer, that seems to be a necessary step for creative breakthroughs (or creative resolutions) of all types. Not thinking about my unresolved painting not only allowed me to be more present with my other paintings, it also set the stage for creative reframing. In this case, it was literaly reframed, but this term can be used as a metaphor for a more basic psychological shift that can lead to creative solutions.

The term “reframing” has been a part of Western psychology and psychotherapeutic literature for some time now. It is based on the rather simple idea that we “define” or “make sense” of each new situation we face based on past experiences in similar situations. We “get stuck” or “have problems” to the extent that our reactions to new situations are based on old experiences which are no longer useful or appropriate. This is similar to the Buddhist explanation of how and why we “suffer”. According to the reframing perspective, we “solve” whatever our problem is by shifting our perception and understanding of the situation we face. To do this means to “let go of” our old frames, (i.e. our old perceptions and understandings).

Sometimes this “letting go” can happen by conceptual reorganization of the nature suggested in the old aphorism “when life hands you lemons, make lemonaide”. Work with positive affirmations is an example of this kind of reframing. However, more sophisticated approaches, such as that found in a variety of psychotherapies, provides an additional step; becoming aware of the “felt sense” of the problem. An interesting article by David Rome provides an overview of this approach with efforts to relate it to Buddhist Practice. What seems to be the common factor in all the techniques of this types is

Gendlin's concept of "felt-sense" is introduced in his book "Focusing," (1978

learning to expand ones’ awareness to include bodily sensations. By shifting ones attention to somatic and perceptual “signals” it becomes easier to “let go of the internal dialogue (or left-brain processing) that, in the name of “problem solving” tends to reinforce old perceptions and understandings that are based on our past experiences.

I’m convinced that creative artists, learn through practice to allow “creative reframing” to happen naturally. They learn that bumping up against unresolved work (feeling frustrated when slogging through times of unresolvedness) is part of the creative process. They learn to “trust the process”, finding ways of letting go of their preexisting frameworks and allowing an alternative frame to develop. What they learn is to “drop into their bodies”, so to speak, and fully feel what is going on at each moment of the creative process and learn to trust that the process is progressing exactly as it should. This entails fully feeling or being fully present with one’s “unresolvedness” at that point of the creative process. Having this skill allows them to mitigate the nagging thoughts that support beliefs such as “I will never be creative again” or thought like “when is this going to be finished?”. In an earlier post called “Performer-Audience Communication”,I suggested that the artist’s “presence” can be felt by the audience, and being fully present with all aspects of the creative process should help this happen more often.

Can Zen help one get in touch with the body?

It should be of no surprise to readers who have seen earlier posts, that I find some interesting parallels in the practice of Zen and other spiritual pursuits. The chief tool for the Zen practitioner is Zen meditation or Zazen. The essence of Zazen is letting go of the internal dialogue or thought trains ,which generally are the focus of our attention,

especially when we feel unresolved. As with the Western psychotherapeutic techniques alluded to above, Zazen entails a shift in attention away from the mind to include bodily sensations that are always present but often ignored in each and every moment of our lives. According to Will Johnson, “The sitting posture itself can be a kind of crucible for burning off the tensions and restrictions to body and breath that all too often keep us lost in thought and unaware of feeling presence.”

While this is easy to talk about, being able to do this on a consistent basis, in a variety of situations, requires years of practice. The result, however is the “awakened person” referred to by Jiyu Roshi or the “autotelic personality” as described by Dr. C. For me, all these terms refer to someone who has developed “creative reframing” or “refocusing” skills; skills that allow them to circumvent or, at least, minimize suffering as they move from situation to situation. The ability to “let go” of or “forget” old ways of reacting based on past situations, allow them to be flexibly adaptive as new situations arrive. In other words, they become more creative; able to respond rather than react to each new moment. Rather than holding on to old experiences that allowed them a momentary experience of “flow”, having these skills allows for a natural life flow of the type described by Jiyu Roshi, a flow based on being present-awake-alive, no matter what situations arise.

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(Results of the “Caption Challenge” are found at the end of this post).

In the last post, “The Inner-Alien and Creativity”, I reviewed evidence from Lehrer’s book Imagine suggesting that being a non-expert in a particular field or endeavor can actually make one more creative. It is not much of a jump from this discussion of what Lehrer called “outsiders” to the quote below from Zen Master, Shunryn Suzuki.

The non-dual approach of Zen requires that we be able to maintain multiple perspectives on any problem, whether artistic, scientific or our own life-problems. This means constantly putting oneself into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations.

This requires practice.

Research suggests that living in a foreign culture can foster creativity but I would suggest that meditation can serve the same purpose. A key skill learned in Zen meditation is to constantly interrupt the habitual stream of thoughts that occupy our consciousness most of the time. These streams of thought make things familiar and provide us with a familiar sense of who we are.

When we plunge into the unfamiliar, we experience discomfort at times but also the exhilaration of greater adaptability and responsibility. This is how one becomes “refreshed”, “alive” and “awake”.

Through practice, one will find him or herself becoming more non-reactive, more flexible or open. And so more creative in responding to daily “problems” as they arise.

This “inner alien” is available to us all but it does require being willing to constantly explore your “inner space” and to accept that the “inner alien” is truely a part of who you are.

Caption Challenge Results

Listed below, in the order received, are the creative responses to this caption-less image I found online.

1. Oh good! More potential converts.

2. OK, OK, I’ll be your leader already!

3. Skewered or nailed, we’re all in jail.

4. Oh Lord, you misunderstood. I prayed for a 100 Gs for the Rectory, not a 100 E.T.s to hector me.

5. How can I tell the truth if you all look Alien to me

6. Ok, maybe now is the time to reconsider the ban on birth control

7. STOP! Just maybe “The Pope” needs to be “EXORCISED” from this normal group of Aliens…

Last time (“Sudden Insight and Creativity”) I left you with a problem to solve from a cross word puzzle. Before giving you the answer, let us go back to Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine: How Creativity Works(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

The author takes us through a number of experimental studies, using “insight” problems, designed to look at what happens in the brain as people solve them. Here is one example of a problem used in these kind of studies:

Marsha and Marjorie were born on the same day of the same month of the same year to the same mother and the same father, yet they are not twins. How is that possible?

If you are like most people, you are already trying to figure it out. Also, if you are like most of the subjects in the studies, you are or will begin to feel frustrated. According to Lehrer, the subjects in these studies complained to the scientists about the difficulties of the problems and even threatened to quit the study. Lehrer goes on to say:

But these negative feelings are actually an essential part of the process because they signal that it’s time to try a new search strategy. Instead of relying on the literal associations of the left hemisphere, the brain needs to shift activity to the other side, to explore a more unexpected set of associations. It is the struggle that focuses to try something new. (p. 17)

Based on various art projects I have worked on and based on my practice of Zen meditation, I recognize the process being described here. I’m sure you do too, even if you are not an artist or a Zenny. Valuable insights and bursts of creative solutions to problems seem to require slogging through periods of right brain analysis until one gives up. And then, if you are lucky, you experience a breakthrough.

According to Lehrer:

One of the surprising lessons of this research is that trying to force an insight can actually prevent the insight. While it’s commonly assumed that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to relentlessly focus, this clenched state of mind comes with a hidden cost: it inhibits the sort of creative connections that lead to breakthroughs. (p.33)

What I take from this is that struggle is part of the creative process. Lehrer doesn’t say it directly, but implies that, over time (with practice?), one learns to trust or, at least tolerate the process. This is one way of thinking about what both creative and spiritual practices are all about. When we first become artists, we are likely to assume that creative people should not struggle; creativity just comes naturally. Likewise, those on a spiritual path often assume that, through practice, they will reach a state where all seeking or searching ceases. I think both views are unrealistic.

In both cases there is a continual searching for ways of self-expression that go beyond what we are now. And, this may involve struggle. What practice can do is to ease the struggle about the struggle. If we understand how the creative process or the self-transformation process works, we are less prone to suffer whenever we are not “advancing” in ways we would hope. We develop faith that, through continued practice, the unresolved issue will become resolved.

I’ll return to Lehrer’s book in the next post. If you haven’t read the previous post and want to solve the cross word puzzle I mention there, do not read any further.

ANSWER:

You’ll recall that the answer to the clue “shopping center” was “pees”.

As to why that was the correct answer, simply look at the letters in the middle (the center) of the word “shopping”. When we were working on the cross-word puzzle, the term “shopping center” conjured up the image of a collection of retail stores. Not knowing that this was a “trick” question, I had to let go of that association before realizing that there had to be another way of approaching it. When I stopped struggling to figure out what pees had to do with a commercial site, the solution became possible.

I just finished reading a new book titled Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer, an editor for Wired Magazine. Lehrer has a knack for combing through a lot of highly technical material on the major factors affecting creativity and bringing this information to life for the reader.

I want to start with the flashy and mysterious aspect of creativity; those moments where new insights, inspirations or ideas suddenly appear out of the blue. As an artist and a Zen student, I think this material is highly relevant to my practices.

Looking at both antidotal and experimental evidence, Lehrer found that these moments of insight nearly always happen once we relax and stop trying to solve whatever problem we are working on. I’ll say some more about the scientific evidence behind this observation in a later post, but at this point I want to tell you about a personal experience with insight problem-solving.

Everyday during lunch, my 97 year old mother and I work on one of the three cross word puzzles she tackles per day. Prior to her moving in with us, I had no interest at all in doing cross word puzzles, mainly because I could never get them started. However, by lunch time, my mother usually has a pretty good start on a puzzle and with some letters present, I’m able to give her some help, especially on clues that related to pop culture or technical terminology. She good at coming up with words that are no longer used much and she knows many French terms. Anyway, together we make a pretty good team and usually manage to cooperatively solve each day’s puzzle.

The other day we had completed a puzzle but were unsettled by one of the answers we provided. The clue for a four word Across was “Shopping Center”. Based on all the words we had answered going Down, the answer to this clue ended up being “pees”. We were certain that our vertical answers were correct and could not understand how “pees” would be the correct answer to “Shopping Center”. Not only did it not make sense but it also seemed a bit risqué for a cross word puzzle.

After a while, we both agreed that the puzzle creator had simply made a mistake and I went into the kitchen to clean up the dishes. For a few minutes I thought about whatever it was I was going to be doing next, but then, all of a sudden, it came to me why our answer was correct.

See if you can get it. When you do, please leave a comment and describe how you came up with the answer. I’ll provide the answer in my next blog post and say a little about why I think this kind of problem-solving is related to art and spiritual practices.To leave a comment, click on the title of this post (written in red) under “Recent Posts” in the upper right hand corner of this page.